Chocolate Unit Study {+ Even More Chocolately Resources}

We used a pre-made unit study by Amanda Bennett because homeschooling while taking care of a 4-month-old baby is HARD I was too lazy to make a unit study from scratch. Turns out, we had a blast!

Read on and look on to see what we did AND to find even more chocolately goodness (in the form of resources for learning about chocolate).

We started each day with a cup of hot chocolate with little floating marshmallows, how else?

Social Studies/History/Geography:

Because cacao trees grow in places within 20 degrees of the equator, we learned a lot about rainforests, especially the Brazilian rainforest and its Amazon River.

We watched videos and read about the layers of the rainforest, even sketching out our own rendition:

We learned all about cacao trees, cacao pods, and the process of turning those football-sized pods into what we now as chocolate. We read about the Mayas and Aztecs involvement with chocolate and charted its journey from the Americas to Europe.

In doing so, we read about Milton Hershey, Henri Nestle, and John Cadbury.

Reading:

Having already read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling (both of which I recommend), we found another choco-centric book like:

Memory-making:

We learned about different kinds of chocolate: dark chocolate with high cacao precentages, milk chocolate, and white chocolate, which we learned can't be considered a chocolate at all.

And, of course, what kind of chocolate unit study would be complete without SAMPLING all the chocolately goodness. We ate more than a fair share of Cadbury Mini Eggs,

Hershey's Chocolate Bar,

Lindt Lindor Truffles,

and Nestle's Milk Chocolate Syrup for glasses of creamy chocolate milk.

We visited the local Ghirardelli Chocolate Outlet and Ice Cream Shop:

Games:

We laughed it up playing a Cadbury Machine Chocolate Game.

Aidyn and I enjoyed this chocolate unit study and wish we could've spent even more time delving into the rich history of chocolate. I highly recommend Amanda Bennett's Chocolate Challenge Unit Study, if you would rather not piece it together yourself. 

If you'd like to take you chocolate adventures further, check out these fun links to more chocolately goodness:

Free Chocolate Unit Study Lapbook Printables at Homeschool Share

Pinterest Ideas for a Chocolate Unit Study

Chocolate-Themed Learning from Mrs. Jackson's Class

Chocolate Unit Study from Adventures in Homeschooling

Chocolate- A Unit Study by Learning Treasures

Chocolate Recipes for Kids at Kidspot

Chocolate-Themed Books at Teaching Heart

Chocolate Factories to Explore around the World

Thank you for reading and following along with our adventures with chocolate!

A Disneyland-Themed Birthday Party

Our family is NUTS about Disneyland. I was taken by my parents as an infant and every year until I was 14. When my husband and I were dating in 2002, we visited the park together, but when our son was born in 2005, we couldn't stop going. Mostly it's the joy on his face, our camaraderie as a family, the screaming on roller coasters and that euphoric high we share that brings us back year after year.

We have a trip planned in January, along with a Tinker Bell Half-Marathon for me, and so Aidyn requested a Disneyland-themed party for his eighth birthday. The day was busybusybusy, and I wish I would have taken more pictures.

Birthday boy by the food table

Snow White's "Poisonous" Apples, with my friend, Amanda, in the background. She carved the skulls. : )

Disneyland train hauling a rainbow of fruit: red strawberries and cherry tomatoes, orange cantaloupe and Cuties, yellow bananas and pineapples, green grapes, blueberries, and purple grapes.

Jungle Cruise Wild Animal Crackers

Winnie-the-Pooh Snack Mix (honey Teddy Grahams, honey-roasted peanuts, M&Ms, and mini-marshmallows)

Finding Nemo Submarine Fish (colorful Goldfish crackers)

Space Mountain Asteroids with an X-Wing soaring above

Mickey Mouse Pizza

Rainbow fruit tray

Yoda Soda (Mt. Dew) and Vader-Ade (Kool-Aid) and Drink Me flavored water

My friend, Amanda, made us the Disneyland train and painted an 8 on the front. : )

Toy Story Midway Mania Carnival Corn Dogs

Our school white board looks much better without math problems. At least for today.

Mickey Mouse Cupcakes

He concentrated so hard on his wish. Wonder what he wished for...

Though the kids were too busy running and playing outside to watch, we showed vintage Disneyland videos such as The Disney Story, coverage from opening day~ July 17th, 1955, and vintage Disneyland shorts. 

I gleaned inspiration for my own Disneyland nuttiness and the following websites, which prove that I am not the only crazy one out there! 

Mickey Mouse Cupcakes

Walt Disney World Themed Party

Stellaluna (Bats) Unit Study

I'm behind on my posts but trying to catch up!

Post-Halloween, Aidyn and I learned all about bats with a Stellaluna unit study.

Stellaluna (by Janell Cannon) is a sweet story about a baby bat who loses her mother and lands among a family of birds. Stellaluna learns to adapt to her new life as a "baby bird" by eating insects, doing her best to perch upright, and sleeping during the night. When Stellaluna reunites with her own kind, she learns how wonderful it really is to be a bat!

Aidyn loved this story and the touching illustrations of Stellaluna's vulnerable eyes and her wacky face when she tries flying like a bird.

Reading:

We snuggled on the couch every day and read this story. After the first reading, we learned new vocabulary words with a set of cards I printed from a Stellaluna unit study on homeschoolshare.com.

Aidyn acted out each word as I read the definition, and we read back to see how Cannon used the word in her story. Then we played Vocabulary Bingo to practice the words.

The next day, Aidyn reviewed the vocabulary cards and chose a favorite word (clutched) and wrote his own sentence with it.

During the rest of the week, we read other bat-themed books like Bats at the Library and Bats at the Ballgame (both by Brian Lies), Bats (a nonfiction book by Gail Gibbons), Baby Bat's Lullaby (by Jacquelyn Mitchard) and Little Lost Bat (a sad little story by Sandra Markle). Aidyn independently read an easy reader called Batbaby Finds a Home (by Robert M. Quakenbush).

Science:

We were fascinated by bats' keen sense of smell after watching some YouTube videos about bats. Inspired by Delightful Learning, I set Aidyn up for a Batbaby Scent Experiment. I scented about six or seven cotton balls with different aromas and showed him his "baby" and let him sniff the scent. I then blindfolded him and let him try to find his lost baby.

He carefully smelled each baby until he found his own!

This scent activity delighted him. We also talked about echolocation, and he impersonated a bat navigating the night sky using echolocation.

He also watched the cartoon version of Stellaluna on YouTube.

Fun Food:

On the first day, I made Aidyn a bat PB&J sandwich with fresh fruit.

Later in the week, I made  him a watermelon bat and an orange bat.

Writing:

Each day after reading vocabulary cards, Aidyn wrote sentences with his favorite words. We also brainstormed some bat facts, and he wrote about his favorite fact and illustrated it.

Pretend Play:

Prompted by his own imagination, Aidyn donned his Spider-Man bath towel and pretended to be a bat. He called himself a "bean bat," a species he made up apparently. He flew around the house and used echolocation and his sharp sense of smell to collect beans. Throughout the day, he provided me with bean bat stats--their diets of fruit and meat, their habitats, their personality and the fact that they shifted from nocturnal to diurnal creatures depending on if they stayed with humans or not. He also said they were gliders, not flyers, and demonstrated said ability all over the house.

We thoroughly enjoyed our little bat unit study! We're still reading Roald Dahl books, and just finished George's Marvelous Medicine. Aidyn is still honing his reading skills and loving math and ukulele practice.

Here's Aidyn playing the opening music of Super Mario Bros.

We have begun a fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving unit study. Last year we covered Cranberry Thanksgiving and had so much fun we want to do it again. Check back soon to see what we do!

8 Out-of-the-Box Summer Activities You've Got to Try

I admit it: I'm a little sad to start putting away the curriculum from this school year. But the days are stretching longer, the sun is beaming and summer is peeking from around the corner.

We've made our bucket list and put the usual summertime activities on it, but why not do something extra silly? If summer is our time to let loose, why not do some out-of-the-box activities that will create wonderfully personal memories? Below are 8 ways to do just that:

1. Host a glow-in-the-dark bowling game.

Source: fbtrouble.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com via Janis on Pinterest

2. Have a Ice Excavation Day.

Source: momto2poshlildivas.com via PediaStaff on Pinterest

We tried this during the year (wish I took pictures!), but it consumed the whole day, was a ton of fun, and brought up so many questions about animals who really fossilized in ice and how to break/melt ice (hint: try salt...).

3. Throw an informal party and invite a clown to your house!



We're pretty lucky to know this clown personally. She's amazing at everything she does, and she's super fun and bubbly. She works in the central valley of California and you can visit her page HERE!

Search your area for clowns and invite one over to wow your guests.

4. Take a hike.

Everyone has some natural beauty around them that has yet to be explored. It's always some state park, river, creek, forest that you've heard about but have actually never been to. Go explore it!

One of our most fun activities last summer was trekking up Mount Diablo. We didn't even go with the intention of learning anything, but we found a quiet little path near the peak with these simple brochures about the trail.

We followed the trail and read the brochure aloud. There were 14 stop points and a little blurb about a specific geologic feature or the flora along the trail. We learned to identify chert, greenstone, and graywacke. We also spied a few reptiles darting under the chapparal.

Not only that, but we had fun, built confidence in climbing huge rocks, and gained a new perspective looking out on the mountaintop.

What natural wonders are waiting for you to explore?

5. Feast on a medieval dinner.

Brush up on your medieval etiquette and ban the silverware! Serve a hearty meal any peasant would love.

While you're chomping on delectables, talk about medieval happenings!

We had a TON of fun when we did this last summer! We got messy, we got full, and we laughed, all while learning a little bit about medieval times.


6. Travel back in time and enjoy a 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s Saturday morning.

This took a fair amount of planning, but our 80s Saturday morning was the BEST morning we had all summer.

Here's how:

1. Find out what was playing on a typical Saturday morning of your chosen decade. Here's a wiki article showing the TV grid for Saturday mornings all the way to 1960. The 50s technically did not have a Saturday morning cartoon lineup, but you can still pull some 50s shows together to watch.

2. Make a playlist on YouTube and add episodes of your chosen shows. Look for 3-part episodes and insert commercials from that decade. If you have an XBOX or another system that allows you to watch YouTube on your TV, you're set. If you don't, play movies from your chosen decade.

3. Pack away any toy that screams modern day. Take out any toys you might still have from that decade (we pulled out all the old Star Wars figures). Visit flea markets and thrift stores to find toys from your decade. 

4. Explicitly choose your breakfast. For 80s Saturday morning, we chose the then-popular Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Visit the breakfast timeline to see which cereals were most popular.

5. If you want, purchase other foods from your decade. This food timeline could help you out.

6. Plan an activity after watching cartoons and playing with toys. For our 70s Saturday morning, we went roller skating and played table tennis (with an actual set made from the 70s that we found at the flea market).

7. Talk about your decade, play music from your decade (you can search any decade on Pandora), and have fun!

7. Have a marshmallow fight.

Source: idigpinterest.blogspot.ca via Amy on Pinterest

Or a balloon fight. Whatever.

8. Bring a book to life with FOOD!

There are so many wacky cookbooks at the library. Scan the selections and pick something you and your kids would love. Here's a booklist to get you started:

1. The Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook


2. The Winnie-the-Pooh Cookbook


3. The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook


4. The Little House Cookbook
5. Roald Dahl's Even More Revolting Recipes
6. Disney's The Magic Kitchen Cookbook

I would love to hear more ideas about having a unique summer! If you have any ideas, please share!